Could A Digital Twin Save Your Life?

Human digital twins are quickly moving beyond manufacturing and into the medical world advancing cancer care, soeeding up drug development, personalizing clinical trials, and much more.

- Tiana Cline

You have cancer!” is one of the most terrifying sentences a person will ever hear in his/her lifetime yet it’s something every family is likely to experience. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cancer is now the leading cause of death globally and the number of new cases is expected to rise by about 70% over the next two decades. When you take into account that there is already an oncology workforce crisis across the continent – South Africa, for example, faces a shortage of radiographers, aging equipment and a decrease in clinical oncologists – providing care to an increasing number of cancer patients is a challenge, more so when the disease is unpredictable and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work.

Technological advancements, however, are starting to shift cancer’s unpredictable advantage by merging physical with digital. One way to do this is by creating a digital replica of a physical system or environment – or a digital twin.

Digital twins are already being used in many industries to simulate complex systems and now they’re being adopted in healthcare with management consulting company, Gartner predicting that by 2025, 25% of healthcare delivery organizations will include formalized digital twin initiatives within their digital transformation.